whoaru99
Epic Member
Understood on the power draw on the previous two posts. More power and not max it out is my personal preference rather than underpowering and squeezing every last drop . For example, on the living room audio system, when I got the ADR speakers, the old Marantz 2220b does drive them, but it has to work a lot harder. So I'm bumping it up with a Marantz 2285b, thank you Bartertown!
So two new developments just since last night.
Speaking of Bartertown, while poking around before I fell asleep, I found this, and asked about it before doing research to discover that it seems to date from about 5 years ago
Onkyo Integra DTR-8.2 surround receiver-$200 plus shipping from Boston.
Then this morning, my contractor who knew I found these speakers dropped off a Yamaha RV-701, with no remote. He said found it on a job site in an abandoned mansion, he had it storage and I can have it free. He's honest, but it's very dusty and he smokes. I have cans of air to blow out the dust. No idea if it works, but from the very brief info I found, it appears to be a good quality 5.1 AVR about 10 years old. Probably can find a remote for about $40, but I know from personal experience you SHOULD look a gift horse in the mouth. We said no thanks on the horse, but what about this?
One of the benefits of AK, is people WILL tell you what they think. Remember it needs to be the hub of the system, not just a part that will "work". So opinions please?
Not to get into a war of semantics, but if there is enough power to fullfill the operational demands, then it is not an "underpowered" situation; despite Internet lore.
As far as specific units for the most part they all do mostly the same things. The only ones I'd specifically steer clear of are the Onkyos from several years ago where they had a bunch of networking and HDMI failures. I don't know the specific vintage/suspect years but there are plenty of anecdotes to be found.
Personally, unless it was a fairly minimalist system, I'd get something with HDMI. Makes source routing and cabling easier. As well, if there are others using the system, single point source selection usually leads to less calls for help for things out of sync. I have an older Yamaha RX-V1700 that has HDMI and a newer, but still several years old Marantz AV-7005 where I also use HDMI. Haven't had any problems with HDMI function (other than not a good enough HDMI cable for a 35ft run at 1080p with Deep Color turned on).
The big gotcha comes in when/if you start moving to 4k. Current 4k stuff generally uses HDCP v2.2 which is not fully backward compatible with the earlier version of HDCP used in gear up until fairly recently. Bear in mind HDCP is not HDMI. They work together, but they are different matters entirely.
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